Ban opened his mouth but said nothing. Did Rory truly not trust him, to hurry off on his own?
“I leave tomorrow for Astora,” Kayo said. “I need to assess the situation there—I’m worried Astore doesn’t have the resources to defeat Connley, even with Lear at his side. Because Connley has Errigal, and much of the island itself listens to his wife. But Connley cannot be king.” Kayo glanced at Brona, a telling, secret glance of shared knowledge, and Ban ignored it, before their intimacy infuriated him again. Kayo swung his gaze back to Ban. “Come with me. We will join with Lear and make our plans. There are others, too: Rosrua is unhappy with the events of the Zenith Court, and Bracoch. Glennadoer will side with Connley, because of his father’s line. But with Lear, Oak, Rosrua, Bracoch, and Ban the Fox of Errigal, we can be a strong alternative to Astore’s might and Gaela’s ruthlessness, and you must know we need to oppose Connley.”
Ban frowned. He did not know it was necessary to oppose Connley. Why would Connley be a worse king than Lear or Astore? Perhaps Innis Lear needed a dangerous, wary king for once, who did not blindly obey the stars. A king with a witch for a wife. Nearer to the earth saints than the cold stars. “Why do you speak of kings, when Gaela and Regan are queen?”
“Not yet, they aren’t. Not until Midwinter. Not until the ritual is complete. Until then everything is in transition. It is a twilight time. And they are merely heirs, married to these ambitious, antagonistic men, who will not sit by and let their wives rule without them.”
Though Ban was not ready to underestimate Regan, he nodded for Kayo. It was too perfect a position to waste: Regan trusted him with her most intimate secrets, and now here was Kay Oak confessing his own plans. Ban was being put in the center of it all. He asked, “You think Lear will accept your help? He was even more furious at you than at Elia.”
“This is where Kayo is supposed to be,” Brona said, in a voice Ban well remembered: her witch’s voice. The smooth, deep tone of invocation, when she said something she’d heard from the roots, from earth saints and holy bones.
Kayo sighed. “Ban, I love Lear as a brother, and long ago I chose this island for my home. I gave up everything else I might’ve been: my name, my family of Taria Queen, my skills as a trader, and the wide road. Everything, boy. For Innis Lear. For the king who is not a cruel or stupid man, but only a hurting, and lost one, who allowed himself be defeated by such things. And I am here for Elia.” Kayo glanced out the window at the bright day. “Lear is my king, still my sister’s husband. The father of my godchild and her sisters. For the good of Innis Lear and its people, this must be settled fast and well. We cannot have a two-or three-way war. That would open us up too much to Aremoria, and I’ve spoken recently with Morimaros and his council. He will surely take Innis Lear if we don’t get a hold of it before Midwinter.”
“Morimaros is a good king, a better commander,” Ban said. “I served in his army. If he chooses to invade our island, he will win it.”
Brona said gently, “You know what is right, son; you’ve always been rooted by it, here.”
“Have I? You said to me once, This is your fate—then so easily you sent me away. How can you know Errigal did not change the way I was grounded, or that Aremoria did not cure me from caring about this chunk of battered rock? I have made choices in a different language than that of Innis Lear, been saved and adored by strange trees whose words shift and laugh. What if I don’t choose Innis Lear now? It has never chosen me.”
He cut himself off, before he openly admitted his loyalties, before he gave too much away.
His mother studied him a long time; Ban focused on the rhythm of his breath and the crackle of the fire in the hearth.
Kayo said, “We’re not asking you to choose Innis Lear. We’re asking you to choose Elia.”
“How?” he demanded, more urgently than he should have.
“To keep your promise and fight for her. If you will help bring her home the right way, you must be on my side in this, and on Lear’s, until Elia herself is ready.”
“Ready for what?” Ban asked.
It was Brona who said, calmly and simply, “To take the throne.”
TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO, HARTFARE
FEW PEOPLE WOULD think to look for the queen of Innis Lear here inside this tiny cottage, tucked into the heart of the White Forest. Fewer still would expect her lounging in supreme contentment on a low, straw-filled mattress beside the hearth.
But Dalat was indeed at Hartfare, spending the week with her friend Brona, the witch of the White Forest. Both of them were heavily pregnant and ready to be finished with the experience.
Brona cupped her belly and crouched to relieve the pressure in the small of her back. She wore a long shift, sliced up the center to open in front so she could easily touch her naked skin, or press back with the heel of her hand when the baby elbowed her or stretched. Her ruffled skirt cinched the shift closed again under her belly, low around her hips, and covering her thighs, knees, and bottom. Still, it was nothing modest by anyone’s standards. A heavy wool cloak weighed on Brona’s shoulders, keeping in what warmth she could; this was early spring, and even the fire was not enough to heat bare skin. Cold, damp air slicked beneath the door of the cottage and at the open windows.
But the witch refused to bundle up and so lose the ability to splay her hands around her son whenever she liked.
The queen groaned, shifting onto her side where she lay on Brona’s bed. “Help me get my feet up, shk lab-i,” Dalat said, beckoning to her second daughter.
Regan Lear, six years old and quietly precocious, moved immediately to lift her mother’s feet.
That simple gesture caused a flutter in Brona’s heart. She could not wait to hold her son, to feel his touch outside her womb.
Dalat, because she was a good friend, saw Brona’s hunger. “Soon,” the queen said softly. “You’ll have him. We both will have them.”
It was Brona’s first child—and her only, she knew, through careful wormwork—but this would be Dalat’s third. Brona had not asked if the feelings changed: the anticipation, the pain, the longing, the exhaustion. Dalat’s face was older now than it had been when Gaela was born nearly eight years ago. The queen was thinner beneath her cheeks, despite health and happiness, but her skin still shone, her smile was vivid, and the merriment that lived in her deep brown eyes promised adventure, as much as it always did. When Brona spent time with Dalat, the witch felt as though she’d experienced so much more than even her own wild life on this angry island could provide: long sea-voyages, storms and illness, foreign ports and magnificent palaces built of shining white stone, points of lapis blue set into necklaces and coronas of gold, vast prairies of rolling, shifting sand, and poetry that dropped from the tongues of men and women like diamonds.
“Is the baby hurting you, Mother?” Regan Lear interrupted Brona’s musing, sitting down on the mattress beside her mother’s head to put a cool brown hand on the queen’s black braids.
“Ah, only a slight bit,” Dalat admitted.
“But I didn’t.”
The queen smiled and poked a finger against Regan’s ribs. The girl bent away, pressing her mouth closed against laughing too brightly. Dalat’s second daughter wore a more formal dress than even her mother, long and dyed bold purple. Brona knew—because she had repeatedly cast spreads of holy bones on behalf of each princess of Innis Lear—that this one carved her place already, as a partner and prop, mother or lover, perhaps even a witch herself. A consort, but never a true queen.